e
hanging in the sky like a wound, like
oths for this moment, since the Blood Moon has never spared anyone's clothes. Bones crack,
laws at me from the insi
No.
people who would carve it out of me. I grip my head as the pain blinds me, my bones aching, my skin burning, and I hold on with ever
e floor, a figure br
now. He shoves through the shifting bodies and reaches me in secon
crack, and then a wolf stands where he was, huge and black as night,
rving between me and the hall. I am so scared. But he doe
protec
snaps, my bones break, m
my stomach, dim until now, blazes like a star. Ter
hut against the glare. Some whimper. Some tremble. Not one dares to look at the light. Not Derek, not the nobles, not
and unbreakable and ancient. The fear drains out of me as if someone has ope
at
rejection, after the pain and the humiliation. Everyone kno
. She stops in front of him and lowers her head, breathing him in: pine and rain, something warm, something dangerous, s
eeting, a promise. My heart pounds, my blood burns, my wolf sings. In wolf form
he wolves shift back, falling to the ground and rising as humans, their he
noise, the eyes. He takes a cloth from the stack by the wall, carries i
another. He does not look at me or speak. His back is to me,
ng. He is a
let him
but does
y voice shakes. "The
tion, for the pain, for the w
eyes flick past my shoulder to the hall, to Derek risin
ha
orks, and the words come out stiff, as if he is reading them off a page he
slap, a punch, a kn
ice is cold, but his hand trembles at hi
and wal
ain that he does not love me. Confusion, anger, sadness, all tangled toget
rk, and I do not know whether to
stand
on
ai
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